“In a season that marked a record 25 years of broadcasting, Report continues the series with two extraordinary investigations.” So said Sigfrido Ranucci, deputy director of Rai Approfondimento and curator and presenter of the show, on the eve of the start of the new season of Report aired on Rai 3 on Monday 3 April at 21:10.
The first of the two investigations, entitled “Black Shadows”, signed by Giorgio Mottola with the advice of Andrea Palladino and the collaboration of Norma Ferrara, concerns Alfredo Cospito, imprisoned for 11 months under sentence 41 bis. Report reconstructs the different phases of the struggle of the anarchist, who has been on hunger strike for more than 160 days and from which the mafia bosses in prison want to benefit. “We will show a series of unreleased videos – expects Ranucci – starting with that of the attack on the Fossano barracks that led to Alfredo Cospito’s life imprisonment, then that of Giuseppe Graviano recounting how he fathered his son in prison, when he was subjected to the 41bis regime, finally a video in which Riina plays cards and mocks the judge Nino Di Matteo”.
So for thirty years the mafiosi have been trying to exploit all the loopholes in the harsh prison. The report will only show the bosses’ university credentials and their particularly generous academic careers in grades, as well as an anomalous concentration of over a hundred mafiosi defended by the same lawyer.
Despite all the problems and setbacks, the 41 bis was the most important and effective tool in the fight against the mafia. Today, however, she is attacked. Following the judgment of the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg and the resulting reform of life imprisonment, Mafia prisoners who are in a maximum security regime can leave prison without having to cooperate with the judiciary. The role of unions and cooperatives in the prison sector will be crucial in accessing services and the early release of bosses. In important Italian prisons, some of these associations are linked to the world of the extreme right, led by the protagonists of the bloodiest pages of Italian history. “The report – Ranucci says – also did due diligence on the companies of Luigi Ciavardini, the former Nar who was found guilty of being one of the perpetrators of the Bologna massacre, and we saw that he was also involved with the Reference company bills dealing with prisoners than 3 million euros. He, Francesca Mambro and Giusva Fioravanti were supposed to compensate the families of the 85 victims with around one billion euros, but have so far declared themselves unable to do so.
The second investigation of the episode, “Taglia il Scalpuri”, by Luca Bertazzoni in collaboration with Goffredo De Pascale concerns the Payback, which literally means restoration but according to the Garzanti dictionary can mean revenge: it is in fact a law risking the companies, provide public health, as it stipulates that if the spending limit on the purchase of medical devices is exceeded, the supplier companies must contribute to the repayment by repaying up to 50% of the turnover from the supplies. Amortization of the devices is a law requested by the Renzi government in 2015. “The former Prime Minister – Ranucci calculates again – gave us an interview in which he admits that the law does not apply and ended with a quip by giving us an appointment at ‘ Fiano Romano Autogrill: ‘During the Minister Beatrice Lorenzin admitted that it is a poorly written law, one might wonder why it wasn’t rewritten at the time,’ she said.
The law in question was activated by Draghi immediately after his resignation, and now more than 4,000 small and medium-sized companies in the sector risk being shut down and have stopped participating in tenders without any specific rules.
“For this reason – concludes Ranucci – we have chosen to go to the two regions of Tuscany and Puglia, which have proven to have spent the most on medical devices, and we have collected some anomalies about the functioning of the spending centers that gifted”.